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"Artistic Picture Framing"

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Many a 19th century patron had their portrait bordered with an elaborate frame, a work of art all its own, or one haphazardly chosen. Often highly gilded and ornate, these frames often overtook the painting or, at best, clashed with it. Will Hutchins, like others involved in the Arts and Crafts Movement, believed that the frames should compliment paintings, but not dominate them. He brought examples of frames created by Hermann Dudley Murphy to illustrate his point. Murphy was a painter and frame-maker in Boston who taught at the Harvard school of Architecture. He considered the design and making of frames to be an art form and signed and dated them accordingly.